THE HABITATIONS OF THE DEAD
If the habitations of the living in ancient Meroe are destroyed, those of the dead remain. To the east of Assur is the great church-yard of pyramids I cannot more appropriately denote them which likewise proves that a considerable city was in its neighbourhood.
It is impossible to behold the number of these monuments without astonishment, eighty are mentioned in the plan of Cailaud; but the number cannot be well ascertained, as the ruins of many are doubtful. They are divided into three groups, one due east from the city; the two others a league from the river Nile, one north and the other south. The most northern one is the largest and best preserved.
They certainly appear small in comparison with monuments of a similar kind in middle Egypt, the height of the largest not being more than eighty feet; but they are more wonderful from their number. They are built of granite like the Egyptian, but do not seem so massive in the interior. The highest of them was ascended, and, as its top was thrown off, the interior seemed nothing beyond a heap of shapeless masses. As no one, however, examined the interior, it might be premature to decide anything respecting it.
Most of the largest of them have a temple-like fore-building in the Egyptian a pylon and a door which leads into a portico, and this again through a sanctuary into the pyramid. It does not appear therefore that they desired here, as was the case in Egypt, to conceal the entrance, unless a real entrance was somewhere else.
Until an interior has been examined, it will not be known whether sarcophagi and mummies are to be found within; I am not aware of having been found beyond Egypt, south of Philae and the cataracts....
The corners of the pyramids are partly ornamented; and the walls of the pylons are decorated with sculpture. That on the largest pyramid, drawn by Cailaud, represents an offering for the dead. In one compartment a female warrior, with the royal ensigns on her head, and richly attired, drags forward a number of captives as offerings to the gods; upon the other she is in warlike habit, about to destroy the same group, whose heads are fastened together by the top hair.... Upon a fourth field appears Anubis, accompanied by the Scha kal, the watchman of the lower world, with a burning in the hand. This representation, together with the magnitude of the pyramid, renders it probable that it is the sepulchre of a king.
That all pyramids here were not monuments of kings is evinced by their great number. Other grandees of the empire, especially priests of high rank, or such as had obtained the sacerdotal dignity, might have found in them their final resting place."
Arnold Heeren, Reflections on the Ancient Nations of Africa, Vol. I, 1832.
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